The Beaver Trilogy vs Star Trek

Ahh...the pointless beauty of teh interweb. I'm sure Tim Berners-Lee never dreamed it could be so wonderfully useful! ;-p

Thanks to Kellog's for this widget apparently...

Nice. Didn't know Vulcans had multiple rows of teeth though...

A transcoding haiku...

Winter becomes spring
Slow crawling, systemic thaw
Email crashes.

Auckland, ay.

This lovely effort, aside from some spurious side note about raising money for sick kids [;-p], is part of the broader local marketing campaign for Cadbury Moro (hence the simile in the song likening the city of Auckland to a Moro bar?!) The overall premise is simple, and quite clever. The campaign riffs on the idea that being the fourth best at anything is much better than being first, second, or third because, in the grand scheme of things, you're still doing really well but you’re out of the pressure zone that comes with being in a 'medal' position. You can just kick back and enjoy your moderate success - or so the propaganda goes.

Now, the music video below features a song about Auckland being the 4th city in the world. "4th at what?” you may well ask; the song does not explain. But fortunately for us, by the power of Greyskull, sorry, Google [they do both begin with a capital "G"] the internet informs us that Auckland was recently ranked as 4th= out of 215 cities (tied with Vancouver) in the Mercer 2009 Quality of Living Survey (last year we were in 5^th position). Nice. What an incredible stroke of luck for the fine people at DDB NZ! Considering that the survey results were only published last week somebody in that team has their ear to the ether.

I hope you enjoy our celebratory tune. It is often very difficult to live up to our JAFA reputation but we do try our best. This one's for you Wellington ;-)



PS: I wonder how Vancouver celebrated?

PPS: A close friend of mine is one of the advertising suits responsible for this campaign. He appears in the video a number of times. There is a ‘lengthy’ shot (2 seconds maybe) of him singing at the back of the 'chorus group' right before the song ends. He is the tall lanky one not wearing his glasses. The video might be even funnier if they actually included his vocal track...and a reconstruction of the wrap party incident where he, whilst gesticulating wildly when telling a story, accidentally bashed someone else (from the video) who is significantly shorter than him...